The Wonder of Us

by Kim Culbertson

  Kiara finally composes herself, looping a long, bare arm around Riya’s shoulders. “What am I going to do when this girl leaves?”

  She doesn’t really direct the question at me. It’s a throwaway question, barely rhetorical, but before I can stop it, something dark sprouts, curling up from those vines in my belly, and her words water it. What will she do without Riya? Seriously? She’s known her for five minutes. “Do you know where the bathroom is?”

  Giving me a funny look, Kiara points at the far wall. “There.”

  I deposit my glass on the bar and hurry off.

  A few minutes later, Riya appears behind me in the cracked bathroom-sink mirror while I wash my hands. Her face seems faintly green in the dim lighting. “You okay?”

  “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I thought maybe you got stuck in here?” she tries to joke.

  I’m not in the mood. “Nope.” I shake off excess water and try to locate paper towels. Do they not have paper towels in Germany?

  Riya points at the hand dryer she’s partly leaning against. Her tone shifting to annoyance, she asks, “Want to talk about why you fled the scene back there?”

  “I didn’t flee the scene.” Maybe being in theater makes people more dramatic than they already are? “I had to pee.” I start the hand dryer, and its hum drowns out Riya’s response. “What?” I ask when it stops.

  “Kiara thinks you don’t like her.”

  “I don’t know her. How could I not like her?”

  “Are you trying to like her?”

  Two girls with matching magenta hair burst in through the bathroom door. Riya follows me out of the bathroom, and I ask her over my shoulder, “What does that even mean?” We wriggle behind a cluster of girls crowding around a mirror hanging in the narrow hallway, holding their mascara wands and lipsticks like unsheathed swords.

  “It means you could make more of an effort. She is.”

  The end of her sentence feels laced with a dare. “Sorry. I left my friendship bracelet kit back home.”

  “Abby!” She grabs for my arm, but I’m one step ahead of her.

  This is one of the times where Riya is trying too hard. She’s forcing the whole thing with Kiara and it’s irritating. We weave our way through the dancers back toward the bar. A new band has taken the stage, all guys with ink-black hair outfitted in mesh tank tops and bright pink tutus. I see Jonas wandering the crowd with his pen and paper. Kiara lounges on her stool, chatting with the bartender I assume is Sebastian. I don’t see Tavin or Neel anywhere.

  I’m hit with a wave of weariness. It’s loud, I’m hot, and now this whole thing with Kiara is messy. It’s too much. “Is there somewhere I can grab some air?”

  Riya’s face sags. She knows me well enough to know Kiara and I will not be doing a get-to-know-each-other dance with the tutu band this evening. She motions toward the back of the club. “There’s a courtyard through that door, but it usually smells like garbage. And smoke.”

  “I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  She shrugs, already turning away.

  Outside, the evening is still warm but feels cool after the muggy heat of the club. The courtyard is more like an alley, smaller than even the stage inside, and a sour-milk smell hangs in the air. It’s dark, and water drips from an unseen place against the cobblestones. This is not a place to hang out, which explains why only two people are out here. One guy, dressed in what looks like a blue auto mechanic’s jumpsuit, smokes against the shared brick wall of the next building and checks his phone.

  The other is Neel, who tucks his own phone quickly into his pocket when he sees me. “Oh, hey—everything all right?”

  “Just getting some air. Was that Moira?” I cross to him.

  He shakes his head. “I tried to ring her, but she’s not answering. She might already be in the air.” His eyes look especially liquid in the dark.

  I remember Riya’s question to him last night. “I know you and Riya don’t always agree on things”—he snorts, his eyes widening at the understatement—“but she’s not wrong. You don’t seem very happy with her.”

  He slips his hands into his back pockets. “Moira is many things: complicated, fit, opinionated—”

  “Critical, self-absorbed,” I offer.

  He narrows his eyes. “She’s brilliant, really. She puts on a bit of a tough face, but she’s smart and interesting and complicated.”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “You mentioned that one already.”

  “Did I?” His face cracks into a smile, a concession. “Okay, she can be a real pisser, I know.”

  “I’ve met more compassionate wolverines.”

  He arches an eyebrow. “Have you?”

  “No.”

  This makes him laugh, and I find myself falling into the sound of it. He runs a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t matter anyway. She’s dumped me. Perhaps I can add failed wolverine tamer to my CV.”

  “Not sure you want to advertise that one.” I think about Riya’s earlier mention of Duck, Duck, Neel. “But she’s done this before, right? And it hasn’t been over.”

  He gives a rueful shrug. “Riya’s told you, has she?” My face flames, and he nods at the admission in it. “I know this isn’t the first time she’s fallen out with me. I’m sure she thinks I’ll go running after her. But not this time. Something about this time.” He holds my gaze. “This time is the end.”

  It dawns on me that while he’s been talking, I’ve been watching his mouth, imagining what it might feel like to kiss him. Heat returns to my cheeks and I clear my throat, trying to sound genuine when I say, “I’m sorry, Neel,” even if I don’t feel sorry, but then find myself blurting, “She’s an idiot, though. She won’t do better than you.”

  He gives me a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

  “Just don’t do anything drastic. When Dido, the queen of Carthage, found out that Aeneas was leaving her, she threw herself on his sword in the middle of a burning pyre.” The words tumble out before I can stop them, and he looks startled with this sudden introduction of classical antiquity into the mix. I drop my eyes, mortified. I do this when I’m nervous: spew random history tidbits that are barely related to the conversation because I don’t know what else to say.

  Still, his surprise seems to melt into something else, his face growing—what is that expression? It could masquerade as affection even if he doesn’t mean it to. But I think he might because he steps closer, until our toes are almost touching. “I promise—no swords, no burning pyres.”

  I force myself to look at him. “Right. That would be hasty.”

  “You know something? In all of Riya’s endless chatter about you, I never expected, well—you.”

  This last word, his velvet delivery of it, sends a delicious current through me, and even though I’m flirting-impaired, I go for it anyway. “Am I complicated and interesting?”

  His eyes grow serious. “Yes, actually.”

  I suck in my breath. The guy smoking against the wall chuckles softly and stubs out his cigarette on his shoe. He gives us an amused nod as he heads back inside.

  I’d forgotten we had an audience and hurry to say, “But I am sorry Moira broke up with you.”

  He lowers his voice. “Are you?” I shake my head, and another curl comes bobbing down. He tucks it behind my ear. Am I imagining that his face keeps getting just a bit closer to mine?

  Riya comes banging out of the door. “Oh, Abby, there you are. I thought you’d been murdered.” Neel and I leap apart, and Riya freezes, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not interrupting something, am I?”

  “No!” Neel clears his throat. “Right, then—ready to head home?” He disappears past Riya through the doorway. Behind me, the drip-drip-drip of the water grows louder.

  Riya clamps her hand on her hips. “What was that all about?”

  “Nothing.” I avoid her eyes, pulling out my phone and checking the time. Only I can’t really get the buttons to work properly with my shaking ha
nds. I pretend anyway. “Wow, it’s late.”

  Riya pauses, waiting for me to explain, then gives up when she sees I’m not offering more information. “I’m ready to go. Kiara and Jonas got into a fight because Jonas thought she was all over that bartender.”

  “Wait. Are they together?” I ask, still trying to recover from whatever just happened with Neel.

  She rolls her eyes. “Jonas wishes they were. But he blew it because now she’s pissed at him. So Tavin’s taking her home. Poor Jonas, he’s just sitting in there, crying into his tea.”

  “He is?”

  Riya laughs. “Not really. But he’s out of paper, someone stole all his pens, and he’s alone at the bar in his pocket suit. I could write Stop depressing people! on a napkin, but, you know, the whole pen-theft thing.” She pauses again, narrowing her eyes. “You sure I wasn’t interrupting something?”

  I wave her off, pushing her back inside the club.

  “Can we go?” Riya asks the next morning. “Seriously, you don’t have to do this. Dad doesn’t care.”

  I shake my head, peering at Dean’s painting. Riya had other plans for our morning, but when her dad mentioned the gallery, I’d jumped at the chance to see his new work. Now Riya keeps flashing me skeptical looks each time I beg to stay “just a little longer.”

  “What are we doing here?” she whispers again, scanning the gallery tucked into a narrow industrial space that seems made entirely of glass and white-painted wood.

  “Enjoying amazing art.”

  Her dad paints large, bright canvases that have always, for some reason, reminded me of the circus. They are never about the circus or feature anything relating to the circus; in fact, Dean and Anju have always been vocal about their loathing of the circus on the grounds of animal rights. And maybe also clowns. No matter, his paintings scream circus to me. I just make sure not to mention this.

  “You hate art galleries,” she reminds me, checking her phone for the tenth time in ten minutes.

  “I don’t hate art galleries,” I insist, even if I sort of do. I love museums, so it seems reasonable that I would also love art galleries. They are essentially the same beast. People wander around staring at beautiful and interesting things, titling their heads, peering in or stepping back, depending on the piece. They both have helpers milling around should people become confused about what it is they are observing or where they should be heading next.

  Only art galleries make me feel the opposite of museums.

  Instead of relaxed, at home, engaged, I’m tense, dry-mouthed, planning my escape. So Riya has an excellent point. Why am I here?

  Because here I don’t have to talk about Kiara or Tavin or how I almost kissed Neel last night in a dingy alley.

  “I like art galleries.”

  “Do not.”

  Maybe because at a museum I can sink into the history and the information, casually buying a postcard or a ten-dollar book upon exiting instead of feeling like I should be considering one of the five-hundred-dollar smaller pieces or I’m wasting everyone’s time. Dean has tried to tell me over the years that I should never feel pressure to buy. The artist wants his or her work seen. Being here supports the creative world. But I always feel like a woman with a severe chignon and dagger heels expects me to either buy something or get out.

  I feel like that now, for example.

  Lovisa, with her lavender-dyed pixie cut, four-inch heels, and dress that seems like its own art installation (medium: indigo Saran Wrap?) hovers nearby, eyeing Riya and me as if we might suddenly set the place on fire. Or wet our pants. Probably the latter, since she clearly thinks we’re still in diapers. When Dean introduced us, she spoke to us in the kind of high, singsongy voice reserved for babies and small dogs who wear fashion sweaters, then asked us if we wanted some “pressed juice” or “nibbles.” I’m not one to turn down snacks of any kind, so now I move around the gallery as quietly as I can with my tiny red metal plate of white cheese cubes and green grapes and try not to say something about circuses to Dean. Or chew too loudly. I’m pretty sure Lovisa can hear me chewing.

  Dean steps up beside me. “What does it make you think about?”

  Not circuses! “This one’s my favorite,” I tell him, motioning to a tall swirl of reds, greens, and blues that all seem to move outward from one another with streaks of light. “It’s like a firework. But sad.”

  He seems thrilled with this response. “Yes! It’s called Capitalism Takes a Holiday.”

  “Perfect.” I nod, not really knowing why it might be perfect. Seems to me it could be named a lot of things. “I like how all the colors are racing one another.”

  “That’s what gives it energy.” Lovisa startles me. I hadn’t heard her drift over to us, would have thought Saran Wrap might make a bit more noise. “This movement here.” She motions at a sweep of red. “And here.” She indicates a streak of silvery gold.

  “What’s the red dot?” I motion to a tiny sticker next to the title.

  Lovisa smiles proudly. “We sold it the first night we opened the show.”

  No price tags. I guess if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. “That’s wonderful, Dean!” I lean to hug him, forgetting my plate, and my three remaining green grapes go rolling across the floor. Lovisa click-clacks after them, bending like a great blue heron to fetch them.

  Riya wanders over. “Can we go eat? I’m starving.”

  I turn to Dean. “Want to join us for lunch?”

  As she walks past me, Riya mutters, “I’m onto you, Abby Byrd.”

  After lunch, Dean walks us past the Gedächtniskirche, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The church was bombed in 1943, but instead of rebuilding it or tearing it down, Berliners did a mix of both. They left it partly destroyed as a reminder of the war, but also built a modern section, rising out of the ruins as a testament to our human ability to move forward, onward, upward.

  I’ve seen a lot of churches. This one, though, feels different. I stare at the chunks of stone missing from its body, a shudder moving through me. I can’t imagine living somewhere with a constant threat of bombing, with death falling from the sky at any moment. I know people live like that now, all over the world, but seeing it here in front of me makes it vividly real, which I guess is the point.

  “Were any of the ancient wonders a church?” Dean asks me, his head craned up, his hands in the pockets of his paint-speckled jeans.

  “Sort of,” I answer, studying the modern belfry, rising like a jagged green iceberg out of the church’s top. “The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was like a church, only they called it a temple.”

  “Same diff,” Riya says, scanning her phone again.

  I watch people hurry along the Kurfürstendamm, tourists standing out from the locals with their cameras and iPads and wrinkle-resistant travel wear. A girl a bit younger than me sits on the ground nearby with her phone, trying to get a shot of the belfry against the bright blue sky. I take a deep breath, the air already hot and thick. “I love Artemis. Goddess of the hunt. So fierce. She was Apollo’s twin sister. When she was born a moment ahead of him, she turned around and helped deliver him.”

  Riya’s eyebrows shoot up. “What the— That’s insane. And gross.”

  “Welcome to Greek mythology. Some pretty disturbing stuff.”

  Dean smiles at Riya’s sour face. She slips her phone back into the enormous red bag she’s been carrying around all day. “Can we go swimming now? It’s like the surface of the sun out here. Dad, don’t you have work to do?”

  Her meaning is not lost on him. “This is where I leave you, ladies. I should get back to the gallery.” He gives us a wave and then disappears into the mass of people.

  Riya locates the bus we need, but even sitting in a seat, the bus rumbling away from the Kurfürstendamm, I can picture the bombed-out places of the church in my mind, like the glimmering imprints behind your eyelids when you’ve closed them after staring too long into the sun.

  To escape the mounting heat, I tak
e Abby to the Badeschiff, a swimming pool and hangout spot on the Spree. The pool is not in the actual river; it’s built directly on top of the river, with its own sand beach and a twisting dock leading to the pool. It takes us about forty minutes to get inside; we change quickly into our swimsuits, and then head out to the pool, winding our way out onto the dock and dropping our towels in heaps. We climb down the ladder into the cool blue water, the shock of it biting at first and then blissful.

  “Ahhhhh.” I glide into the water. “Perfection.”

  Abby sinks in beside me. “Exactly what we needed. I like hot weather but not like this.”

  I swim along the side until I reach the empty corner of the pool, stopping to take in the view of the East Harbor, the old buildings against the blue sky spotted with white clouds. Hard to believe I’ll soon be leaving this skyline behind. What a year. A few feet away, Abby leans her back against the pool edge, her arms splayed out like a cross to hold herself up. She kicks her legs out in front of her, then lets them drift slowly back under her. We spend a few minutes in silence, the water hypnotizing us. Finally, I break the spell. “I got a text from Kiara earlier. Tavin is pouting.”

  “What—why?”

  “Because you ditched him last night. To go hang out with Neel.”

  Abby shakes her head. “I didn’t ditch him.” She dunks under the water because she thinks it will hide her blush, but I see it. When Abby blushes, it’s a neon sign.

  I wait for her to surface. “What were you and Neel talking about?”

  She wipes water from her eyes and avoids mine. “Moira. They’re over.”

  “I don’t buy it. Moira breaks up with Neel the way most people cancel a dinner reservation. She knows she can always get a table tomorrow. It’s what she does.”

  Abby swirls the surface of the water with the palm of her hand. “He said this time it’s the end.”

  “Why would he say that to you?” I wait to see if she offers what I’m obviously most interested in, but she doesn’t, so I say, “From where I was standing, it looked like he was about to kiss you.”